Must Get Plugins 2018 for Beginners

Hey Newspaper Family,

Just thought this might be useful to the ones starting a fresh new blog. I’m adding up plugins i’m currently using for my blog, feel free to add some to the list:

1. Akismet Anti-Spam (to stop spam comments without adding them to your comment approval page)
2. All In One WP Security (simple wp security for your website)
3. Contact Form 7 (i have never used it, but yeah it might be handy)
4. Envato Market (to keep your theme updated with Newspaper directly)
5. External Links (super seo plugin, automatically prevents any external link from passing juice of your website to another for google ranking)
6. GTmetrix for WordPress (checks page speed directly from plugin here)
7. Heartbeat Control (ignore if you are not moderately good with tech. This one removes a lot of load from your cpanel of hosting)
8. Inline Related Posts (adds beautiful in-line related posts automatically by extracting from tags and categories)
9. Jetpack by WordPress.com (obvious)
10. Mashshare Share Buttons (kinda good, especially has ability to add fake number of shares)
11. OneSignal Push Notifications (a must get app! sends notification to mobile as well desktop users that you have published a post, just get this one)
12. Regenerate Thumbnails (obvious)
13. Remove Query Strings From Static Resources (speeding up website)
14. SumoMe (for beginners, yeah this is super one, their tutorials explain everything)
15. Table of Contents Plus (adds beautful TOC in your posts automatically using headings in a hierarchy)
16. WP Smush (for image optimization)
17. WP Super Cache (supports Cloudfare, one reason i preferred it over w3 total cache)
18. WP-Optimize (cleans database and makes your hosting cleaner)
19. Yoast SEO (obvious)

Apart from that, please do add free SSL certificate by Cloudfare, and setup free CDN by Cloudfare for your website. It boosts speed you will love to see.

Regards
Dr.Varun

Hi Dr.Varun,

please can you provide exact link for :

External Links (super seo plugin, automatically prevents any external link from passing juice of your website to another for google ranking)

Because on pluggins search screen there are two, and neither mentions this benefits that you said they have. Also is there some instruction for this ?

Thank you in advance
D.

These are good.

I’d also ad…

>Analytify (analytics)
>Pretty Links (track link clicks and shorten links and more)
>Public post preview. (share a preview link of your post before it goes live.)
>Revive Old post. (keep old posts relevant on social media.)
>TinyMCE (better editor)
>UpDraft (free scheduled cloud backups}

Hi @dariosipos , you can get the plugin here: Sem External Links. Following are my settings for it:

https://screenshot.net/jgp79c1

Just make sure to add your facebook.com, twitter.com, etc. to add to exclude list to nofollow.

Thanks @ryansmccain , that will add to the list. Apart from that, i’m also using SumoMe. Not too many apps, just a pop-up for Facebook page likes and a sharer since sumome has super analytic for shares.

I liked SumoMe but it really slowed down my site. Make sure you test your sight.

Yeah @ryansmccain , agreed upon that. SumoMe does slows down, but the tweaks i have done still compensate for it. I might remove it sooner or later, just trying to figure out some alternatives.

Thank you Dr.Varun… as I am beginner you really helped alot.

please, can you help me with SSL thing, because I got that advice from you and successfully added it.

Now it seems it’s not displaying, and I used https://www.whynopadlock.com/ to discover where is the error.

Screenshot of only errors:https://drive.google.com/open?id=14EJCrjeIm-xjTLXNauFH3Bs8yD68r_8S

This is error and as I am the beginner I simply do not understand what should I do with this and how to solve it.

Also isn’t this what is reported as an error, actually where a logo is loaded in theme. And logo is displayed on page. I loaded it in wordpress “upload” logo and its visible on page now.

Thank you in advance
D.

Hello @dariosipos , the following lines are the error:

.td-menu-background,
.td-search-background {
background-image: url('http://digitalfuturetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/14.jpg');
}
.white-popup-block:before {
background-image: url('http://digitalfuturetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/14.jpg');
}


To fix them, you will have to replace the http image version with the https version of image. To do it, simply upload the specified image again- http://digitalfuturetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/14.jpg. And replace it in theme panel>Background. Let me know if it fixes it.

• This reply was modified 8 years by drvarun5179.

Hi Dr.Varun,
thank you very much first for helping, there is still one error reporting which I cant get rid of when I tried to update same picture.

I found in ThemePanel-Background two places where to upload/update picture and that removed two errors but one still remained.

Then for test I replaced that picture on both places in Background with new picture so I will be able to see difference, if that old is still somewhere in wordpress.

Please see screenshot: new picture is applied in Background to two places for Mobile

https://drive.google.com/open?id=14Y8Oo5ogOhZePMhn0fn59CiJn_lNdzjS
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1B0KohBxrkQRQlvUjNWxAN496UwRszAar

While now still that test result shows that old picture is somewhere and needs to get updated also. So I assume that I updated/loaded new succesfully on 2 places as 2 errors dissapeared:

“An image with an insecure url of “http://www.digitalfuturetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/14-300×199.jpg” was loaded on line: 891 of https://www.digitalfuturetimes.com/.”

I dont know where to find that last error- where is an option to exchange that picture-or update it?

Thank you so much in advance
D.S.

You should remove the picture insteaed, it only adds to load on website. Think in broader terms, how many people actually click on mobile menu? That was one reason i removed it too, like few hours ago. You can test my website speed here: https://medicforyou.in

Wow, it worked ! 🙂 after removal all problems dissapeared

Thank you so much for help dr.Varun

No problems 🙂

Hi Dr.Varun,
I will exploit your generosity more 🙂

So I would like to add on bottom of my page simple link “subscribe”.
Because I do not want users to be jumped on by pop-up menu, but if someone wants he can subscribe. I would also send link to subscribe via social networks to few targeted people in my industry. Then by subscribing they would get every 14 days summary of latest articles.

So, what is best way to make this link (some plugin or how) ? in which software and how ? in way that it doesnt slow my page.

Thank you in advance
D.s.

In addition, I also use the following:
1. WP BItly – WP Bitly can be used to generate shortlinks for your website posts, pages, and custom post types. Extremely lightweight and easy to set up!
2. Use Google Libraries – Allows your site to use common javascript libraries from Google’s AJAX Libraries CDN, rather than from WordPress’s own copies.
3. WP Fastest Cache – I use it with Autoptimize since it makes my site faster than wp super cache.
4. Autoptimize – I use it to Optimise JavaScript code, and compressing it (no CSS coz it breaks or strips certain colour codes).
5. Download Monitor – A full solution for managing downloadable files, monitoring downloads and outputting download links and file information on your WordPress powered site.
6. Google Analytics Dashboard for WP (GADWP) – Displays Google Analytics Reports and Real-Time Statistics in your Dashboard. Automatically inserts the tracking code in every page of your website.
7. Login LockDown – Adds some extra security to WordPress by restricting the rate at which failed logins can be re-attempted from a given IP range.
8. MailChimp Forms by Optin Cat – The Mailchimp Optin Cat WordPress Plugin Makes It Super Simple To Create Beautiful Mailchimp Sign-up Widgets & Forms In Minutes.
9. Subscribe to Comments Reloaded – Subscribe to Comments Reloaded is a robust plugin that enables commenters to sign up for e-mail notifications. It includes a full-featured subscription manager that your commenters can use to unsubscribe to certain posts or suspend all notifications.
10. WPForms Lite – Beginner friendly WordPress contact form plugin. Use our Drag & Drop form builder to create your WordPress forms.

You don’t have to use all of these. Just choose the ones that suit you.

Hi @dariosipos , you can try setting up mailchimp for that. Apart from that, google feedburner is the simplest idea. It’s quite easy to set up though.

• This reply was modified 8 years by drvarun5179.

Thnx for list @epickenyan , i have been using WpFastestCache and AutoOptimize previously. But WpSuperCache is the most supported Cache plugin for Newspaper theme when using Cloudfare+CLoudfare’s Rocket script. I had to abandon the former ones because in the end, lots of plugin only adds to server load and hence a slower server response time.

Dr.Varun,

I noticed on your very nice page : https://medicforyou.in that you solved the issue which I have.
I have disabled all counters but “0” is displayed everywhere.

Please can you tell me how to hide this counters as on pictures:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wXMfapCYwlMtMKLhftvAYSJii9SjhKWR

my settings are:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YtMHl3K46D3jWWDq5YaZTqqA7Z4lPGqe

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1s8ETNn2tCSovPptm1LZ2rAMRSjjv7bJJ

thank you so much

@dariosipos

> Please can you tell me how to hide this counters as on pictures:
> https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wXMfapCYwlMtMKLhftvAYSJii9SjhKWR

Disable Show Comment Count:

https://www.screencast.com/t/SzitilMDWynl

@drvarun5179 I am very sceptical about using Cloudflare coz my blog is fast without it and I am wary to give them the permissions they ask when setting up. Plus my site is fast with autoptimize and wp fastest cache. Another thing, is your website colour scheme in line with best suggestions for medical sites? https://www.motocms.com/blog/en/medical-websites-colors/

Surprised that nobody mentioned anything that might be considered a proper security plugin. I saw reference to wordfence but that’s one of those walking, talking nightmare plugins that work brilliantly on sites with no traffic but consume tons of resources for anything else, and this theme doesn’t need a resource hog to make it slower.

Surprised that nobody mentioned anything that might be considered a proper security plugin.

For example, on our websites we use this plugin: iThemes Security (formerly Better WP Security) https://wordpress.org/plugins/better-wp-security/

hey, can you share the steps to setup onesignal ?